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I am ridiculously amused that I managed to write a post that had 24 comments before I even got round to looking at it again - and it's about Brussels sprouts ;)

If you had Christmas dinner today, what was it? Richard & I did roast beef, roast seitan, roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings (normal & vegan), roast parsnips, carrots, white cabbage, baby corn, roasted red peppers, peas, vegan cauliflower cheese and gravy. (After typing that list, the word "roast" now looks like it's spelled wrong even though it isn't). The vegan cauliflower cheese was terrifyingly popular and disappeared quite quickly - I was expecting everyone to be freaked out by it. Then we had a break from eating and opened presents. My mother has bought us a cuddly polar bear that is ALMOST AS BIG AS ME!! (Pictures to follow). Dessert was, variously, Christmas pudding, chocolate cheesecake or vegan chocolate mousse cake, with cream, custard (dairy & soya) and vanilla ice cream (soya). Om nom nom.

In the morning, Richard has to go to work, even though it's Saturday, and Boxing Day (debatable), and there are no trains. He got an automated email from the server at work saying that the power had failed in the building. So he has to go in and spend about three hours rebooting machines in the correct order so that they can talk to each other properly. Oh, the joys of being a senior sysadmin in a firm that is absolutely dependent on computers...

roast chicken stuffed with sausagemeat over the breast, roast potatoes, roast parsnips, carrots, brussels sprouts, peas, chestnut stuffing ... and then some of them had Christmas pudding later. I'm regrettably not on form on the eating side of things or the cooking side of things either this year. We have a fabulous joint of beef for tomorrow though.

We had roast beef with gravy, roast potatoes, parsnips and carrots. Also steamed sprouts with chestnuts and bacon. Followed by christmas pudding with cream.

Power failed in our office (just one server, and not too critical, except for web access to email) at about 2am on Christmas day. I was in France (as I am now) so had to ask one of my colleagues to go in and reboot things. In theory, the UPS and the one server should come back by themselves if it happens again, but it hasn't since then...

We had roast turkey stuffed with sausagemeat at one end and sage and breadcrumb at the other, accompanied by gravy, bread sauce and cranberry sauce. Vegetables were roast potatoes, lots of brussels sprouts and peas. Pudding was Port wine jelly, we're having the traditional pud tonight.

Dinner at my sister's house. I brought kabocha squash soup. There was a glazed spiral-cut ham (slightly amusing story to come in my journal). The rest was derived from American mom-has-not-much-time-to-cook-and-it's-the-70's back-of-package recipes. Some kind of cheesy-potato casserole (involving pre-grated potatoes (hash browns) from the frozen-food section and canned cream of celery soup), and that green beans with some other cream-of soup topped with canned onion rings dish; also some uncreamed broccoli and cauliflower from the frozen-food section. There were also frozen french fries, and raw carrots and cucumbers for the kids (I ate a little of those). It was reasonably tasty, except the the potatoes were too cheesy for my tastes.

In the evening we had various snacks-from-bags, plus homemade cookies my other sister had sent.

BTW, I'm not denigrating my sister's food choices--just amused at how different they are from mine, and that they do fall into classic American trashy-eats territory. She works and has three small kids, and I can guess from just spending a few hours with them a few times a year that I'd engage in many conveniences-of-questionable-taste if I had three kids. (Heck, the reason I have my fresh produce delivered is purely convenience--I am too lazy to shop regularly and freqently enough to have good veggies on-hand.)

I have to say that the cheesy-potato casserole and the "green beans with some other cream-of soup topped with canned onion rings dish" sound utterly revolting. And French fries for Christmas dinner! Can't you get frozen roast potatoes there?

Okay, the cheesy-potato casserole was kind of revolting. Green bean thing? Well, I'm the sort of person for whom onion rings (of any sort) can completely compensate for anything they top.

Had I been hosting there would have been,

squash soup

Some roast meat or poultry thing. I like (and have in the past roast) beef, ham, non-ham pork, turkey, and chicken.

If poultry, stuffing (some cooked in-bird; some cooked separately)

mashed potatoes, possibly with garlic

Unadorned vegetables. I like them better simple, and rarely do anything fancy with vegetables. They either go into soup, get roasted (sometimes with herbs), or get steamed. Most likely the vegetable would have been broccoli (since I did get a bunch in my last delivery).

steamed or possibly glazed carrots (especially if I learned that the kids don't like broccoli)

possibly some kale sauteed with onion (because I personally really like greens, and there are some currently in my fridge)

Dessert--might have asked someone else to bring something. Or if I had time I might've made, or purchased an apple, or other-fruit pie; If I were ambitious, then chocolate (silken) tofu pie.

French fries were especially for the kids as it was known they would eat them when they might not eat the casserole-thing. In general, yes, I think I probably could get frozen roast potatoes, but I'm truly not sure what is typically available in the frozen food section of the supermarkets where my sister shops. I'm very much in an urban area, she very much lives neither in an urban area, nor in the sort of suburban area where "whole foods" or "real food" (even if frozen) marketing and availability is common.